A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

Yet the warning about extrapolating from animal to human behaviour deserves serious
consideration. Why is not every large city in the world a ‘sink’ of violence and perversion? It is
true that many of them are; yet others, such as Hong Kong, where you would expect to find the
‘dominant rat syndrome’, have a reasonably low crime rate.
Ardrey provides one interesting clue in the chapter on ‘personal space’ in The Social Contract. He
describes an experiment carried out by the psychiatrist Augustus Kinzel in 1969. Prisoners in a
Federal prison were placed in the centre of a bare room, and Kinzel then advanced on them slowly,
step by step. The prisoner was told to call ‘Stop!’ when he felt that Kinzel was uncomfortably
close. Non-violent prisoners seemed to need a ‘personal space’ of about ten square feet. But
prisoners with a long record of violence reacted with clenched fists long before Kinzel was that
close; these prisoners seemed to need a ‘personal space’ of about forty square feet.
This seems to support the ‘personal space’ theory. But it still leaves unanswered the question: why
do some criminals need more than others? And the answer, in this case, requires only a little
common-sense. When I am feeling tense and irritable, I tend to be more ‘explosive’ than when I am
relaxed; so much is obvious. My tension may be due to a variety of causes - hunger, overwork, a
hangover, general frustration and dissatisfaction. The effect, as John Christian discovered with his
Sika deer, is to cause the adrenal glands to overwork; the result of long-term stress in animals is
fatty degeneration of the liver and haemorrhages of the adrenals, thyroid, brain and kidneys. The
tension causes fear-hormones to flood into the bloodstream. In The Biological Time Bomb (p. 228)
Gordon Rattray Taylor mentions that this is what causes the mass-suicide of lemmings, who are
also reacting to over-population. He also describes how American prisoners in Korea sometimes
died from convulsive seizures or became totally lethargic; the disease was named ‘give-up-itis’.
But then, we are all aware that our attitudes determine our level of tension. I allow some annoyance
to make me angry or impatient. When the telephone has dragged me away from my typewriter for
the fifth time in one morning, I may say: ‘Oh dammit, NO!’ and experience rising tension. Or I
may take the view that these interruptions are tiresome but unavoidable, and deliberately ‘cool it’.
It is my decision.
It seems, then, that my energy mechanisms operate through a force and counter-force, like garage
doors on a counterweight system. Let us, for convenience, refer to these as Force T - the T standing
for tension - and Force C, the C for control. Force T makes for destabilisation of our inner being.
Force C makes for stabilisation and inhibition. I experience Force T in its simplest form if I want to
urinate badly; there is a force inside me, making me uncomfortable. And if I am uncomfortable for
too long, the experience ceases to be confined to my bladder; my heartbeat increases, my cheeks
feel hot. My energies seem to be expanding, trying to escape.
Consider, on the other hand, what happens when I become deeply interested in some problem. I
deliberately ‘damp down’ my energies, I soothe my impatience, I focus my attention. I actively
apply a counter-force to the force of destabilisation. And if, for example, I am listening to music, I
may apply the counter-force until I am in a condition of deep ‘appreciation’, of hair-trigger
perception.
When we look at it in this way, we can see that the two ‘forces’ are the great governing forces of
human existence. From the moment I get up in the morning, I am subjecting myself to various
stimuli that cause tensions, and I am continually monitoring these tensions and applying ‘Force C’
to control them and - if possible - to canalise them for constructive purposes. Biologists are inclined
to deny the existence of free will; yet it is hard to describe this situation except in terms of a